Miscellany:
Buffalo Springfield's biggest hit, "For What It's Worth," was a showcase of Stephen Stills' emerging talent, but the band recorded a grip of excellent Young songs, as well, many of which wound up on his 1977 anthology, Decade. "Mr. Soul" is one, and it's a blatant but thrilling "Satisfaction" rip-off that nonetheless helped establish Young as a creative force with a strong stage presence.
Decade was much more than a best-of collection; for many, it was the first panoramic view of Young's scattered discography between 1966 and 1977, featuring Springfield album cuts, CSNY smashes, and previously unreleased recordings along with solo favorites like "The Old Laughing Lady"—a stunning rendition of which would close Jonathan Demme's 2006 concert film Neil Young: Heart Of Gold.
Young has been the subject of films as well as a director, but his definitive concert film is 1979's Rust Never Sleeps, released in conjunction with the album of the same name and a modified set titled Live Rust. Amid its infamous Jawa-costumed stagehands and reggae breakdown in "Cortez The Killer," Rust features "Powderfinger" unleashed in all its plodding, scuzzy magnificence.
Besides all of Young's aborted studio albums over the decades—which he sporadically cannibalizes, most recently on Chrome Dreams II—he's amassed a body of live material that's undergone numerous plans for release. In 2006, Live At The Fillmore East, the first installment of his Archive Performance Series, finally saw the light of day. Some fans instantly complained about the ostensibly stingy, six-song track list, but the savage 1970 set with Crazy Horse wound up being well worth the wait. It was followed this year by the far more extensive and subdued Live At Massey Hall. Capturing Young in his Toronto birthplace during a 1971 solo acoustic show, the grainy, dreamy DVD half of the package—especially during eerily prescient classics like "Old Man"—draws his legendary career full circle.
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